52 research outputs found
Taken by strum: ukuleles and participatory music-making in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Ethnographic study of ukulele playing in Hamilton, N
Traditional knowledge and cultural importance of Borassus aethiopum Mart. in Benin: interacting effects of socio-demographic attributes and multi-scale abundance
ResearchBackground: Eliciting factors affecting distribution of traditional knowledge (TK) and cultural importance of plant
resources is central in ethnobiology. Socio-demographic attributes and ecological apparency hypothesis (EAH) have
been widely documented as drivers of TK distribution, but their synergistic effect is poorly documented. Here, we
focused on Borassus aethiopum, a socio-economic important agroforestry palm in Africa, analyzing relationships
between the number of use-reports and cultural importance on one hand, and informant socio-demographic
attributes (age category and gender) on the other hand, considering the EAH at multi-scale contexts. Our
hypothesis is that effects of socio-demographic attributes on use-reports and cultural importance are shaped by
both local (village level) and regional (chorological region level) apparency of study species. We expected so
because distribution of knowledge on a resource in a community correlates to the versatility in the resource
utilization but also connections among communities within a region.
Methods: Nine hundred ninety-two face-to-face individual semi-structured interviews were conducted in six villages of
low versus high local abundance of B. aethiopum spanning three chorological regions (humid, sub-humid and semiarid)
also underlying a gradient of increasing distribution and abundance of B. aethiopum. Number of use-reports and
score of importance of uses of B. aethiopum were recorded in six use-categories including medicine, food, handcraft,
construction, firewood, and ceremonies and rituals. Data were analyzed using Poisson and ordered logistic modelsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Meta-analysis of type 2 Diabetes in African Americans Consortium
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is more prevalent in African Americans than in Europeans. However, little is known about the genetic risk in African Americans despite the recent identification of more than 70 T2D loci primarily by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in individuals of European ancestry. In order to investigate the genetic architecture of T2D in African Americans, the MEta-analysis of type 2 DIabetes in African Americans (MEDIA) Consortium examined 17 GWAS on T2D comprising 8,284 cases and 15,543 controls in African Americans in stage 1 analysis. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) association analysis was conducted in each study under the additive model after adjustment for age, sex, study site, and principal components. Meta-analysis of approximately 2.6 million genotyped and imputed SNPs in all studies was conducted using an inverse variance-weighted fixed effect model. Replications were performed to follow up 21 loci in up to 6,061 cases and 5,483 controls in African Americans, and 8,130 cases and 38,987 controls of European ancestry. We identified three known loci (TCF7L2, HMGA2 and KCNQ1) and two novel loci (HLA-B and INS-IGF2) at genome-wide significance (4.15 × 10(-94)<P<5 × 10(-8), odds ratio (OR) = 1.09 to 1.36). Fine-mapping revealed that 88 of 158 previously identified T2D or glucose homeostasis loci demonstrated nominal to highly significant association (2.2 × 10(-23) < locus-wide P<0.05). These novel and previously identified loci yielded a sibling relative risk of 1.19, explaining 17.5% of the phenotypic variance of T2D on the liability scale in African Americans. Overall, this study identified two novel susceptibility loci for T2D in African Americans. A substantial number of previously reported loci are transferable to African Americans after accounting for linkage disequilibrium, enabling fine mapping of causal variants in trans-ethnic meta-analysis studies.Peer reviewe
A procedure for predicting the permanent rotation of monopiles in sand supporting offshore wind turbines
Foundations for Offshore Wind Turbines (OWTs) are designed following the limit state philosophy. One of the considered states is the Serviceability Limit State (SLS), which verifies that the permanent rotation of the foundation generated from accumulated strains in the soil is below a project specific criterion. Despite design codes requiring an estimation of the permanent rotation, there is not clear guidance on how to implement this. This paper describes a methodology to estimate the monopile permanent rotation for SLS and discusses its advantages and limitations. The methodology combines an accumulation method with results from 3D Finite Element Analyses (FEA) and a soil model that accounts for strain accumulation as a function of the number of cycles, relative density and load characteristics. The performance of the proposed methodology is compared against experimental centrifuge tests and results from advanced 3D FEA, indicating that it can predict the permanent rotation with satisfactory accuracy, and with a considerable reduction in computational effort. This is important for the design of OWTs, where different load histories might be required to be checked – often under tight time constraints – to find which load history leads to the largest permanent rotation, and therefore is more critical to SLS design.publishedVersio
Contemporary music student expectations of musicianship training needs
The practical training of contemporary popular musicians, that is, the preparation of performers, songwriters, and music production personnel for the global popular music industry, is still in its infancy. This article seeks to discuss the specific issue of what musicianship skills should be taught, by interrogating the perceptions of a cohort of students studying for the Bachelor of Contemporary Music degree at Southern Cross University in Australia. Determining appropriate musicianship training programs for musicians in popular music is problematic because of the wide range of genres and professional practices involved in the field. Thus it seems to make good sense to tease out what music students themselves think about their support training needs. This small-scale study of 43 students in the first and second year of their degree shows that performance, composition and music production students have different musicianship-skill learning priorities
A review of modelling effects in centrifuge monopile testing in sand
Monopile supports are to this day the preferred foundation solution for offshore wind turbines. There is still an empirical gap, however, between the in-situ conditions for these monopiles and the test conditions the current design methods are based on. This relates to both pile geometry and load conditions. The gap introduces uncertainties and in order to optimise design, this gap needs to be minimised. Scaled modelling in an increased acceleration field, i.e. testing in a geotechnical centrifuge, can be an effective way of understanding behaviour and obtaining empirical evidence. Reliable testing is underpinned by thorough consideration of scaling laws. To address fundamental understanding of modelling effects in centrifuge testing of laterally loaded monopiles in sand, a review of the latest relevant research for performing state of the art centrifuge testing of monopiles in sand has been carried out. Based on this review, modelling effects that introduce some uncertainties in the scaling of the results are identified, and based on that, a coordinated centrifuge-testing program is presented. The test program will be performed across five centrifuge facilities and aims at minimising the identified modelling uncertainties
Views of black and white children concerning the distribution of personality characteristics1
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